How to Leisure Like a Lazy Millennial

You’ve done it. You’ve made it through the work week, through the traffic, and you’ve made it home. You unlock your door and wonder again how long it will take until these stupid keys are replaced with what cars already have – the ability to unlock when you get within a certain radius of the door, and the ability to open when you kick the bottom of the door. I mean really, how do they expect you to juggle your keys *and* the nachos stuff you got in preparation for the weekend?

You enter your home and your phone automatically pairs to your speaker, because ain’t nobody got time for those stupid auxiliary cords. It starts playing “Closer” by the Chainsmokers because you were listening to it on repeat on the way home, but you’re ready for something else now. “Alexa,” you say, “play something else.” “Okay,” your speaker says, and “Starboy” by The Weeknd comes on. Perfect. “Alexa, turn on the lights.” Let there be light, indeed.

You dump your cross-body work bag on your clean floor, vacuumed by your Roomba. It just found its way into your bedroom, shark fin attached because you were bored that one time. Alright yes it was inspired by that YouTube video of the cat in a shark costume riding a Roomba around the room.

Immediately, you change into the comfiest clothes you own, which could mean sweatpants and a t-shirt from high school, or legit pajamas. Jeans are not on this list, and neither is anything else you’re willing to be caught dead in.

Bon Appetit

One hour later, your significant other makes it through the traffic and to your door. By this time you’ve settled into your pre-Netflix routine of checking three social media platforms simultaneously while not really listening to the music that’s still playing, and your SO plops onto your couch next to you to join in (on their own phone of course). You trade stories about former roommates and teammates for a while before realizing that you don’t have drinks.

You get up to fix this terrible problem when you find out you have a worse one – you are out of alcohol, and you only have flat soda for a mixer. And you’re in your comfy clothes, and there’s no going out once you’ve entered that stage. After a moment of panic you remember what year it is, and you take out your phone to order alcohol to be delivered. Crisis averted.

But this makes you think that by the time the alcohol gets there, you’re going to be hungry, so you go back and forth about what you don’t want for dinner until you settle on Curry (you’re sick of pizza because you’ve been eating leftover pizza for lunch at work for about three days).

“Alexa, ask what beer goes with Curry.” “Here’s what I found for furry deer,” she responds. “Cancel,” you sigh, and order whatever beer you feel like. You turn on Bob’s Burgers to watch while you wait because watching a show which takes place in a restaurant half the time is a really great idea when you’re hungry.

A couple episodes later, just as you’re starting to get hangry, your food and drinks arrive. The two of you sit down on your couch to eat. You don’t have a dining room/kitchen/breakfast table, because where would you put it? Besides, why would you eat at a table when you have a couch that’s much comfier and conveniently angled towards your smart TV?

After complaining about That Guy At The Office and That One Chick, respectively, you and your significant other start the same discussion you had for dinner – what you don’t want to watch on Netflix. Ten minutes and dozens of exasperated eyerolls later, you end up rewatching Peaky Blinders because you’re cultured like that, you have to wait another month before the slew of new show seasons starts, and you still have to wait two more days for the next episode of Sherlock. As you start the show, your smart lightbulbs sync to your TV and your apartment is bathed in color-coordinated lighting, depending on the scene of the show (lots of gray and brown, since it’s Peaky Blinders).

Once in a while you interrupt the show to point out something in an article you’ve been reading even as you’re watching Netflix, because heaven forbid you do one thing at a time. Or you show them a recipe you found on Pinterest, which sounds delicious even though you just ate. It makes you hungry, again, and you decide to make brownies from the mix that was delivered to you yesterday via Amazon Prime Now. You long for the day your brownie mix will be delivered in one hour instead of two and dropped onto your balcony via drone instead of at your door by an actual person, because Ugh People.

Sweet Slumber

Several episodes, drinks, and brownies later, you fall asleep on your significant other’s shoulder. They shake you awake and suggest you both give in and go to bed, and you get very excited at the thought of finally being able to sleep without having to go to work again in the morning (five nights is a long wait for this). But first, you head to the bathroom and brush your teeth with your electric toothbrush that tells you when you’ve brushed an area long enough and yells at you when you’re pressing too hard on your gums.

Finally, your lights turn themselves off as you shut your door, you fall onto your mattress that arrived in a vacuum-sealed bag in a box, tell your phone to cancel your alarm for the morning, set your sleeping app to wake you at your lightest moment of sleep sometime between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m., and are dead to the world.